Footie legend David Ginola cheats on wife with model mistress, 27, after deciding to ‘live life to the full’ following a near-fatal heart attack
FOOTIE legend David Ginola is cheating on his wife with a model 22 years his junior.
The ex-Spurs and Newcastle star, 49, decided to “live life to the full” following a near- fatal heart attack.
The French hero is said to be “gloriously in love” with Maeva Denat, 27.
Ginola and his model mistress are lovestruck despite the 22-year age difference, it was claimed last night.
The French former Premier League ace has been cheating on his wife of 25 years.
Ginola — who used the phrase “because I’m worth it” in L’Oreal shampoo ads in the 1990s — has been pictured in public with his arms around his new love.
A source in Paris told The Sun on Sunday: “Maeva is mad about David, and the feeling is mutual.
“The only sad part of it all is David’s wife Coraline, who is naturally devastated about what has happened.
“It’s uncanny how Maeva looks just like Coraline when she started out with David in the 1990s.”
The new romance comes after David vowed to “live life to the full” after a heart attack seven months ago nearly killed him.
It also follows an angry showdown when Maeva had tried to see him in hospital and Coraline demanded that she stay away.
Former model Coraline, 48, is now understood to have dropped her married name, using the surname Delpin instead.
Ginola, who will be 50 in January, collapsed after suffering a heart attack during a charity football match in May.
He was clinically dead for eight minutes.
He doesn’t care what other people think
The former Spurs and Newcastle midfielder had to be shocked four times with a defibrillator.
He was then rushed to hospital in Monaco, where he endured a six-hour quadruple bypass operation to clear blocked arteries.
The source revealed: “David feels he was given a second chance after this horrifying experience, and now he doesn’t care what other people think.
"He wants to live life to the full.”
ODD REPLY ON MISSUS
THE Sun on Sunday’s Graeme Culliford interviewed David Ginola in November about his collapse, heart scare and recovery.
Graeme said: “It was odd because he only mentioned his wife once during our lengthy interview. When he did it was in the past tense.
"He was explaining something and said to me ‘my wife at the time’.
“I asked him if his wife had helped him through his ordeal but he changed the subject and moved on to talking about other things.
“While David briefly left us for a break during the interview I asked his agent if he was still with his wife and she said they were still together and I shouldn’t ask him any more questions.”
Ginola, who is a successful TV football pundit for a range of media including BT Sport and CNN, is said to be “gloriously in love” with mum-of-one Maeva.
The source continued: “They’ve been an item for a few months, and are very happy together.
“Like David, Maeva comes from the south of France, and has done brilliantly in Paris.
“She a model, an actress and also enjoys dancing. She’s a huge talent who’s going to go far.”
Ginola was first spotted out on the town with Maeva in the French capital in September.
They went for a romantic meal following his appearance on the C à Vous programme on the France 5 channel.
Photographs showed Ginola caressing his lover as she draped her arms around him.
Wearing thigh-high black boots, she also rested her head on his shoulder.
Ginola is believed to sometimes stay at Maeva’s home in Marseille.
Her modelling career has won her a huge army of fans.
In a YouTube video “Maeva the Muse” she pouts for the camera in shots around Paris, at one point wearing nothing but a skimpy white vest.
The freckle-faced model has small tattoos of a heart and “peace-sign” fingers on her left arm, and a large inking on her right shoulder.
A great friend of the new lovers is 30-year-old Matt Pokora, the French singer who helped Ginola following his heart scare.
The source said: “Guys like Matt have been a huge support to David, and he’s delighted that he’s now found love with his friend Maeva.”
Pin-up David and Coraline were married in 1991.
They have two grown-up children — son Andrea, 25, and 22-year-old daughter Carla, who is an internet star in France.
Ginola told The Sun on Sunday last month how his “heart went boom” during the charity game.
He said: “I was running back to the halfway line when boom, my heart just stopped and I hit the ground face-first. The players thought I was joking but then my friend said, ‘Look at him, he is not OK, he is not fooling around.’
“I swallowed my tongue and my friends fought to get it out of my throat, but my teeth kept clamping down on their fingers.
“Someone called the emergency services and they said, ‘Forget the tongue, he is dead, his heart has stopped, you need to concentrate on pumping his chest.’
“My heart stopped for eight minutes at least. There was no pulse. I was dead. Then the air ambulance arrived and they hooked me up to a defibrillator.
“They sent three electric shocks to my chest and when the third didn’t work they started to lose hope. But my friends told them, ‘Do not give up, David is fighting hard.’ After the fourth, my heart started again.
“The ambulance worker turned to my friends and said, ‘I have a pulse.’ Everyone started cheering and crying.”
Ginola continued to play amateur football after his glittering Premier League career, which included a Player of the Year award in 1999, before ending in 2002.
But post-retirement he started smoking and drinking more.
And he revealed that, while a genetic defect caused the heart attack, the lifestyle did him no favours.
He said: “It’s strange because there were no warnings.
“I don’t remember anything but I have been told I was doing flick-overs during the game and scoring goals. At one stage, I felt a heavy pain in my groin and my friend said I should stay on the bench but I said, ‘No, I want to play.’
“I scored a goal and on the way back it was just boom.
“My friend, the footballer Frederic Mendy, did CPR and it is him I have to thank for being alive today, because he kept the blood going to my brain.”
Ginola, who played 17 games for his country, went by air ambulance to a specialist cardiac hospital.
Doctors told his family that his brain had been starved of oxygen so long he might be left in a vegetative state.
Coraline was not available yesterday at the couple’s multi-million pound villa in the south of France.
The property in St Maxime overlooks the Mediterranean.
Coraline’s housekeeper said: “She does not want to say anything.”
Yesterday Ginola’s agent denied he had split from his wife but refused to say if the pundit was in a relationship with Maeva.
Ginola’s home nation has a reputation for love rats and two-timing hubbies. President Francois Hollande dumped long-term partner Ségolène Royal for journalist Valérie Trierweiler in 2007 — before cheating on her with actress Julie Gayet in 2014.
Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn had a love child with a woman 20 years his junior.
Late ex-president Francois Mitterrand was 47 and married with three kids when he started his 32-year affair with Anne Pingeot, 20.